Play by Forum questions

[pfusch]

A couple quick questions…

I am interested in starting a Play by Forum game on here with someone. I have a couple weeks of nothing to do, so it sounds like a cool way to spend some time.

First question: What does MAPVIEW mean? I read it in one of the game logs on here and don’t know what that means…

Second question: how do you deal with combat??? Like, dice rolls etc.

Thanks…

I already have a board setup to play, so once I figure these things out, if someone wants to play, let me know in this thread.

[pfusch]

Another thing….

Is there a list of abbreviations that are used? I see lots of stuff like OOL and wol and such that I don’t understand. A comprehensive list would be great.

[DarthMaximus]

Check this out:

http://axisandallies.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2306

Mapview is just a map that can be emailed to one another, and Dicey is a program that will run the battles for you. Both explained in the above link.

OOL = Order of Loss
WOL = Without Loss
ex. Karelia - taken wol –> Karelia taken without loss

Inf = Infantry
Arm = Armor
Ftr = Fighter
Bom = Bomber
Trn = Transport
Sub = Submarine
AC = Aircraft Carrier
BB = Battleship
AA = Anti-Aircraft Gun
IC = Industrial Complex
HB = Heavy Bombers
IT = Industrial Technology
LRF/LRB = Long Range Fighter/Bomber
SSub = Super Subs

I think that is most of them.

[pfusch]

That helps a lot. This mapview software is handy. I was just going to use a set up boardgame, and probably still will. That dicey thing, however, looks a little….‘dicey’. I would have thought someone would have made an application for that purpose. Anyways, the system it uses is pretty strange, to me anyways. I am a web developer by profession, and I think I might go over all the features that would be required for such a system and consider making a similar web application for public use that would, hopefully be easier to use and more plentiful.

The first thing that made me cry was “Guess a game number until you find one that isn’t used…” Oh lord.

[DarthMaximus]

You actually don’t need to put in a game number. There is a link at the top of Dicey that is for Non-AAMC members, so you just click that and just leave the game number blank. If you do that you won’t have a log of all the dice rolls for the game but they still get emailed to you. I’ve played a number of PBEM games and never check the log. I’m satisfied with just getting the email. And will usually save them till the game is over then delete them.
Once you use it once you’ll get the hang of it, it really isn’t that bad.

But it would be cool if you worked on your own, I wrote one in C#, but it doesn’t do emailing yet, as a matter of fact I really haven’t worked on it in a while. It’s more of a hobby for me though. Took a few computer classes in college a few years ago (late 90’s), but mostly dead languages, COBOL, Assembler, did take a little Unix and C though. I’ve been slowly getting back into it which is why I’ve been messing with C#.

I’m not sure if they are still looking for A&A tools for this site or if they are working on their own but if you did make your own dicey web app maybe they’d consider linking to it from here.

Oh yeah, I forgot this, sometimes I still set up the board too. There’s nothing like rolling the actual tank pieces across the board or the mighty Japanese navy in the Pacific. The battleship pieces are just so cool! :D

[pfusch]

That’s intriguing. I know very little C/C++ programming, unfortunately, but I feel that such a project should be web-based anyways. The demands are not so great that they make a web application unsuitable speed-wise, and the limitations on platform compatibility really suck for application programming. I primarily work (and play) in linux. I have windows installed for the occasional Ravenshield game, but that is it. As a result, the mapview program isn’t much use to me, but I don’t mind having the board set up. In fact, I probably prefer it. In chess I always did better on a board because I could look over everything at once and plan simultaneously. In something like mapview or even in the PC CDROM version of A&A, there is too much moving around to see everything that you have to plan in geographical phases…I dunno. It’s not a really big deal either way.

Coincidentally I just landed a contract job to develop a web application for a company near me that requires a pretty large code base of user-related stuff, like accounts and cross linking accounts in a client/contractor relationship. I am well acquainted with the folks and am free to use the objective code that I write that is not central to the project. So, I can use a lot of the database access / user account related code towards this project once I am done the work project.

I am pretty excited about taking a stab at this.

Thanks again for your help and advice.